“The Pill is a bad metaphysic”: Mary Harrington on says the pill has changed everything – and not really for the better.
----
“Is there something to be said for all of these things which I’ve been busy trying to dismantle? Because I’d taken it at face value that they were all just bad by definition.”
As Mary Harrington writes in her book Feminism Against Progress, she’s someone who has “liberalled about as hard as it’s possible to liberal”. In her 20s, she pursued maximum sexual freedom, non-hierarchical relationships, and communal forms of living. By the end of that decade, she experienced a “personal crash” that coincided with the global financial crisis. And she found she no longer believed in “progress”.
These days, Mary calls herself a reactionary feminist, one who is against “progress”. She disbelieves that we are steadily moving into a better and brighter future of freedom and human perfection. Neither does she believe that self-determination and liberation from every constraint is the path to that utopian goal.
This doesn’t mean that Mary wants to wind back the clock to a time when women were permanently pregnant and lacked rights as well as the vote. But she argues that “progress” has meant a series of trade-offs in the name of freedom, and she’s sceptical that these have delivered unmitigated gains, overall, for women.
In this interview with Life & Faith, Mary Harrington explores how the technological shocks of industrialisation and the contraceptive pill have deeply shaped feminism and male-female relationships, and changed everyone’s lives – not really for the better.
--
Explore:
Mary’s book Feminism Against Progress
An article in First Things where Mary explains “reactionary feminism” and tells a bit about her own story
An essay in The UK Spectator – and edited extract from Feminism Against Progress – where Mary makes the pro-sex case against the pill.
A column in UnHerd on the place of faith in the “newly-ascendant post-Christian moral regime”
Mary Harrington on Twitter
Fruit-Pickers and Truth-Seekers
When Life Doesn’t Go to Plan
A Christmas Classic
Everyday economics
Culture Making with Andy Crouch
REBROADCAST: A History of Non-violence
Silence and Spirituality in Wild Places
Odd Ball: Greg Sheridan talks about faith
One and Free? Religious freedom in Australia
Costly Virtue: The price of doing what’s right
Busy Bodies: the gifts and curses of the evangelicals
The Dream (and Nightmare) of Technology
Caring for the Queen
Domestic Violence: An Afterstory
Getting History Right
Staying Married
REBROADCAST: An Astronomer’s Guide to the Galaxy
The Merry Philosopher
Ice and Isolation
Asking Questions: Finding Answers
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The Hello Heaven Podcast
Devoted To Prayer
Cast The Word
Let Me Be Frank | Bishop Frank Caggiano’s Podcast | Diocese of Bridgeport, CT
The Bible Recap
BardsFM